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I'm a fan of Eloquent JavaScript. In my book on CoffeeScript (http://pragprog.com/titles/tbcoffee/coffeescript http://pragprog.com/titles/tbcoffee/coffeescript)

I'm a fan of Eloquent JavaScript. In my book on CoffeeScript (http://pragprog.com/titles/tbcoffee/coffeescript http://pragprog.com/titles/tbcoffee/coffeescript), I recommend it as a resource for readers who want a thorough introduction to JavaScript. So obviously, I think it's pretty damn cool that someone ported his book to CoffeeScript (albeit with modified examples). The inclusion of Underscore.js as a standard library is, I think, also quite sensible. Of course, there's a fundamental philosophical difference between my book and Smooth CoffeeScript, which is highlighted on the book's front page: > Why no JavaScript? Because it is difficult enough to learn one programming language at a time. This book does not assume knowledge of JavaScript or another language. I, on the other hand, think that it's important to understand JavaScript in order to work with CoffeeScript, and that CoffeeScript is not well-suited to being a first programming language. The situation will improve as tools for debugging CoffeeScript become available, but even then, it's unlikely that you'll use CoffeeScript for a real project without reading documentation (and code) for libraries written in JavaScript. But hey, I'm happy to see anything that gets more people hooked on CoffeeScript. :)

autotelicum 15y ago
Smooth CoffeeScript is a book about programming, problem solving, looking into how algorithms work, and learning from it. Those things really appealed to me in Eloquent JavaScript. Smooth CoffeeScript uses CoffeeScript because it can express the code much more clearly than JavaScript, but the book could have been written in another language; Python for example. I created it because it was a book I would like to read. It is great that there is now a handful of resources so you can pick what suits you best when you decide to learn CoffeeScript.

autotelicum 15y ago

Smooth CoffeeScript is a book about programming, problem solving, looking into how algorithms work, and learning from it. Those things really appealed to me in Eloquent JavaScript. Smooth CoffeeScript uses CoffeeScript because it can express the code much more clearly than JavaScript, but the book could have been written in another language; Python for example. I created it because it was a book I would like to read. It is great that there is now a handful of resources so you can pick what suits you best when you decide to learn CoffeeScript.